According to Michael Moore, George Bush gained his presidency through a coup d'etat. Al Gore recieved 539,898 more votes than Bush, but because of Bush's wealth and connections, there was a scandal with the Florida voting machines. Katherine Harris, Bush's campaign co-chairwoman and Florida secretary of state in charge of elections set up the voting machine database to deny voting rights to ex-convicts and "suspected" convicts residing in Florida. This just "coincidentally" happened to remove almost every African-American Floridian, and thousands of others who just commited small crimes, even if it was something as dumb as loitering in the 1950's.
The system removed everyone with a similar name, birthdate, and social security number as a convict. So if a John Smith was arrested in summer of '78 for a DUI, then hundreds of people are screwed.
I think this is ridiculously suspicious. But it's good to know that America didn't willingly place that pompous, under-educated, redneck twit as our head of state. But this voting scandal gets worse when it turns out that a list of false convicts, people who got their right to vote reinstated after serving their time long ago, was sent to Florida by Texas. Texas is George W. Bush's state!
The American media, naturally, pretended nothing ever happened, but the BBC was hot on Bush's trail. You have to love those Brits. At least thirty different Florida laws regarding the ballots and voting were ignored or changed. They're probably laughing their fuzzy hats off over at Buckingham Palace now, at least until Bush pushes the big red button that says DO NOT TOUCH in bright, friendly letters- and blows up the northern hemisphere. Seriously, is Ashton Kutcher going to jump out on election day and shout "Ha, bro! You just got punk'd!"? Because that's what it's starting to feel like. I have a strange predilection that this book is just going to continue baring what a joke our country really is.
DearGeorge
If you read this list, you'll wonder "how on EARTH did Bush get RE-elected!?" Moore lists all of Bush's "accomplishments", which include violating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (banning nuclear weapons), giving billions of federal dollars to destroying the environment, taking billions of dollars from education, welfare services, and lower-class privileges. He also cut taxes by 46%- for the wealthiest 1% of America. What ever happened to our right to impeach the President? Does it not apply here?
Also, Bush elected a lot of oxymorons into his Cabinet (heavy emphasis on the last two syllables) such as nominating Bennett Raley, opposer of the Endangered Species Act, as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science. Swim away, fish! Swim away! Civil rights opponent Terrence Boyle got a federal judgeship. I suggest we all follow the fish. This is getting downright te
rrifying.
The next part is by far my favorite fact in the book. George W. Bush, when asked in an interview what his favorite book was as a child, answered The Very Hungry Caterpillar. That book was published a year after Bush graduated from college! Next Moore is going to tell us that Bush went to Harvard and got a degree in metaphysics! In this chapter it is revealed that Bush is an illiterate, an alcoholic, and a convicted felon. And not only did he ACTUALLY go to Harvard; he also got into Yale! Is this a joke!? Also, Bush denys financial support for students that have done drugs, but not for homicidal murderers. Which is funny, because Bush himself did drugs, and was arrested three times for various reasons, including a DUI. The next chapters are only going to get worse, in my opinion. I'm shaking in my slippers.
Dow Wow Wow
As predicted, this chapter is scarier than the last. Commercial airplane pilots, who control the lives of hundreds of people at a time, get paid less than a kid working at McDonalds. Starting pay at American Airlines is $16k, but when pilot training and uniforms are deducted, that drops to about $9k...gross. Half the pilots on staff are eligible for food stamps. But that will look bad on American Airlines' records, so all employees are not allowed to apply for food stamps, or they will be fired. In 2001, pilots at Delta Airlines went on strike. The greedy little Union-ers were demanding $20k as the starter pay. Delta didn't agree for almost a year, after they had almost driven themselves to bankruptcy from worker shortages. I don't know about you, but I'd like the guy taking me and my family up to a breathtaking 30,000 feet to be content and focused, not wondering which fast food join he'll have to stick up in order to pay his rent. Or one who decides to make the plane take a nosedive into the Everglades.
Now Moore tells us that there is no recession, it's just the rich people trying to stave off the middle and lower classes with honey flavored lies. 17% of the top 82 companies in America pay NO taxes, or, like General Motors, they worked the tax companies so well that the government ended up owing billions of dollars! The IRS has giving up headhunting the rich, and has moved on to the regular, hardworking, average American! Taxes for that subsidiary has gone up by more than 13%. In 1919, 108 actual U.S. car companies existed. In 1929, that dropped to 44. In 1959, it moved to 8. Now? There are 2.5 actual American car companies in America. Capitalism is ripping us to shreds faster than an angry toddler with a napkin.
Kill Whitey This chapter outlines how white people are ruining the world. Moore says he's never been harmed by a black person, and rarely even sees one around (this was ten years ago). Most serial killers? White men (occasionally women). Who started all the wars America has been involved in? White men. Who invented the internal combustion engine? White men. This next one is my favorite- Who started the Holocaust? White men that other white men labeled as Nazis and Germans to make themselves feel better.
That always annoyed me, when people assumed that Germans caused WWII. Sure, they played a major part, but not ALL of them were Nazis. There were also Polish Nazis, Swedish, basically whoever appeared Aryan. You can't just stick the German label on and call it quits. Hitler wasn't even German! He was Austrian! Rant over, sorry.
Slavery? White men. CEOs that lay off thousands of Americans a year, forcing them to foreclose and live in soup kitchens? White men. Slaughter and eviction of thousands of Native Americans (including the Cherokee, which have a ton of blood ties to my family)? White men. According to Moore, Caucasians are the scariest apex predators in the world.
In Michael Moore's film Roger & Me, a woman clubs a bunny to death to sell it as meat. He recieved thousands of angry letters and messages with opinions from random Americans who thought the bunny scene was too graphic, too disturbing, made them physically sick, left them lying awake at night unable to sleep. Afew minutes later in the next scene, a black man in a Superman cape holding a plastic toy gun was shot to death by Flint (Michigan) police. He didn't recieve a single message about that. In fact, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America; gives movie ratings) gave Roger & Me an R rating, saying the bunny scene was too violent for younger audiences. They didn't mention the shooting at all.
Moore talks about how no black man got 400 people to drink Kool-Aid (Jim Jones, founded a cult, got more than 400 people to commit mass suicide by drinking Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide) or how "a Beach Boys songwriter casts a spell causing half a dozen nymphets to murder 'all the piggies' up in the Hollywood Hills" (A lot of facts wrong here, it was the Beatles, not the Beach Boys, and the murders were caused by Charles Manson and his "family" to start a war between the whites and the "piggies", or blacks. Charles Manson was a nutcase who thought he was Jesus and thought the Beatles were sending him hidden messages that an interracial war was coming called Helter Skelter, and that him and his "family" should hide. And most of 'The Family' was male, with a couple females, so not "half a dozen nymphets".) I had to do some research here, I've never heard of these guys. Moore would say it's because the media doesn't want to publicize white crimes. I think it's more because these lunatics died before I was even born. This is getting really scary. I didn't know people that insane existed. And Charles Manson is from Cincinnati OHIO! Then there is that crazy chap who read Catcher in the Rye and decided to kill John Lennon. Poor Beatles.
Then he points out, why are rap lyrics shunned so much (I sold bottles of sorrow/Then chose poems and novels- Wu-tang Clan) when rock/pop songs written by famous caucasians are so much worse (I killed everything in my path/I can't say I'm sorry for the things we done- Bruce Springsteen). That last one wasn't even gramatically correct. I'm starting to fear the white man too.
Idiot Nation
This chapter discusses that we are a nation of idiots. 44 million Americans can't read, and worse, 200 million can read, but choose not to. Our own president thinks that Africa is a nation,not a continent. Then he brags that "even C students can become the President of the United States!". Wow. I think that every time we decide to bomb a country or city, they should take a poll of how many people can locate that place on a map.In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower elected Maxwell Gluck to be Ambassador to Ceylon (Sri Lanka)- even though the man couldn't name either the prime minister OR the country's capital! Moore thought that the problems in education weren't caused by the kids lack of knowledge, but the adults. He was watching a television show where a pompous hothead named Fred Barnes whined on and on about how teachers and their evil union are stupid and slowing down our children. "These kids don't even know what the Iliad and the Odyssey are!" the guy fumed. So Moore called him up the next day and asked Barnes to tell him what the Iliad and the Odyssey were. Barnes didn't know, and thought this was some prank.
The chapter starts talking about how Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth don't require their students to take a History or Foreign Language class and as such, the kids that go to them know nothing important (if they want a place in government). I think this is slightly outdated information... Most colleges now make you take a
foreign language class just to get in.
Apparentally, a lot of people share the idea that if your kid ain't learnin', it's the damn teachers fault! Um, no. Those teachers turn their backs to high wages and embrace the disdain from parents just so they can teach your child. And with all the time spent in schools (roughly fourteen years. If the kid doesn't go to college, that's almost his/her entire childhood. When you finish school, you're a legal adult.), teachers essentially raise your kid for you. They do what should be the job of the parents. Are they shown the appreciation they deserve? Oh good heavens, no! That would be bordering on sanity! We show them as much hostile, barely concealed fury, as we can muster. "You've got to wonder about teachers who claim to put the interests of children first- and then look to milk the system dry through wage hikes," says the December 2000 issue of the New York Post. First off, it's difficult to milk a system that barely has anything in it to begin with. Whenever presidents need money, it always seems like the first thing they touch is the education budget.
At Greenbrier High School, a boy named Mike Cameron wore a Pepsi shirt on "Coke Day" and was suspended for a day. The school had entered a contest sponsered by Coca Cola that could win them $10,000. Pepsi sent Mike sponsorship and gave him free Pepsi for life. Now that's desperation on the school's part. (I also have to add, whoever snuck past the Wikipedia authorities and graffitied the Greenbrier High page under the heading Web Design Class, it was hilarious. Well done. "Microsoft Frontpage, HTML, and Dreamweaver are studied. It is extremely useful, if useful means that very few people will ever use any of these programs or skills in their entire lives. Please think twice before attempting. Press alt + F4. That is the most you can get out of life at this point.")
Oh, and according to Moore, there is no permanent record.
Nice Planet, Nobody Home
Finally, another eyewitness to the con that is recycling! I myself have seen the trash guys pick up the actual brown trash bins, then throw the recyclable materials from the red bins in with it! This is done by most trash facilities, companies, and even Congress. Congress throws away 1,959 TONS of waste paper EVERY YEAR! CRAZY!!! I don't even want to recycle anymore.
Then, way back when there wasthat whole beef with Mad Cow Disease (beef, get it?). Well it turns out that that is an honest, serious, issue that should probably be studied a bit more. Scientists wanted to see why cows being forced to eat other cows turned them into disease ridden lunatics. So two researchers went to the island of Papua New Guinea, where there are apparently alot of cannibalistic outbreaks, and figured out that cannibalism is a disease called Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE). In TSE, rogue proteins called prions attach themselves to nervous tissue in the brain and deform it. The protein essentially will eat holes into a person's brain. Prions are spread by cannibalism. You can't get rid of prions, because they are proteins, but scientists are looking for something that might dissolve just that protein. No one knows how TSE traveled to Britain, but it got into their sheep, which were then ground up and fed to British cows, which were also then ground up and fed to MORE cows. The prions will lie dormant for almost thirty years, so the British didn't know anything about it until ten people died from TSE in 1996. So they, naturally, cremated the infected cattle. But when you burn a prion-infected organism, the proteins just float up in the ashes and smoke and travel in the wind to their next victim. Sometimes, TSE is accidentally diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease (unless you do a CAT scan or an MRI) because the holes in the brain cause the same symptoms, memory loss, dementia, sleep apnea, and eventually full-body paralysis and/or death. As I said, TSE is incurable, so this is really bad.
This leads to my next thesis, that cows are slowly taking over the earth. I mean, look at it, they release a ridiculous amount of carbon dioxide that is eating away at our atmosphere, they only produce about two pounds of beef for every twelve pounds of grass and grains, they contribute to deforestation, and they have the ability to destroy the human race with a human brain eating parasitic protein. This gives me a hearty prejudice against the cattle. So the next time you feel bad when eating a hamburger, poor cows, whatever, remember: you're helping save the human race.
The End of Men
Men are slowly going extinct, according to a Census record in 2000. Baby boys are becoming rare. Moore says that because of in vitro fertilization, and the portable stepladder (that's a bit sexist. Most women are taller than this guy anyways) men aren't needed anymore so Mother Nature is killing them off, because they enjoy destroying her environment. They've destroyed 816 American species of wildlife, are responsible for both the Titanic and the Exxon Valdez, and other nefarious acts.
Then there come the statistics. 496 of the top 500 companies in America are run by men. No woman has ever been president, and has only recently even been considered on the ballot. There are 45 male governors- out of fifty states. Just think, one of those FIVE WOMEN is Sarah Palin, so really it's 45 men, 4 women, and 1 maverick. To earn the same salary as a guy does in a year, a woman has to work a year and four months. This is weird and dumb, considering the next facts:
Men don't live as long as women- almost 15 years less. Their brains are less well-formed and deteriorate faster with old age. They are more prone to disease. Their body systems break down faster than women's. Considering this, if you share Moore's Stone Age ideals, the only useful men in the world live in Switzerland, where every man has to protect his country and family from impending crisis. That's right, ALL OF THEM. It's like the cave men going out to hunt for mammoth all over again. But more peaceful. And tidier.
So consider this: No, I'm kidding, who cares about all this gender apartheid crap. I'm no feminist, because I think they're jerks. Equally, I'm no misogynist, because they're worse. In a perfect world, all the feminists and misogynists would be transported to some tiny island where they can fight out their differences like the neanderthals they are, and leave us Homo Sapiens in peace.
We're Number One!
We are just amazing... the U.S. is the ONLY COUNTRY that declined the Kyoto Protocol treaty, where countries have to make goals to lower their carbon dioxide emissions or keep them at a steady rate. Only three other countries didn't accept, and they're undecided (Afghanistan, Western Sahara, and Somalia). This is all Bush's fault. What else has he done? Only started two new cold wars with China and Russia, withdrew troops from Palistan/Israel causing new horrific bouts of violence between the Arabs and the Jews, did the same to Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro), got the UN to remove the US from its Human Rights Committee, bombed civilians in Iraq, and more. Although we are only 4% of the world's population, we own TWENTY-FIVE percent of its' wealth. Crazy.
Then, of course, when Russian President Gorbachev offered to destroy all of Russia's stockpiled nuclear weapons as long as we destroyed ours, what did we do? Nada, zip, zero. They got rid of all of their 39,000 warheads, and we just sat back and watched the broke Russians shiver in the cold. We missed the chance of a lifetime. Now, since the Russians are so poor, they are thinking of making more nukes and selling them to Iran and North Korea. Of course. Thank you, President Bush.
We are currently annoying Israel, North Korea, AND Yugoslavia, ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Give yourselves a pat on the back, folks! WE started all the fighting in Israel, by dumping all the Israelites there. Poor Palestinians have no clue what to do. They are basically treated like slaves. They have zero voting rights, can't own property, and are second-class citizens. They do not have universal rights. They are taxed, jailed, and Cherokee'd around Israel like farm animals. We give this country $3 billion dollars a year so the Israelites can form an apartheid. And if we realize that this is gregariously similar to our treatment of African Americans, then Israel has a good 300 years, a bloody civil war, and a group of nonviolent protests that it still needs to go through to break free from this prejudiced slump. Now the real question is, WHY ON EARTH did we dump the Jews in a country full of people that hate them? The Jewish can only take so much- now they're lashing back. Israel has nuclear weapons. We should all be building the bomb shelters now, because if WE had nukes back during the civil war, I'm sure it would have played out ALOT differently. I suggest they BEGIN with the nonviolent protests and see where that takes them.
The biggest joke of a nation ever is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Just look at the name. They can't just call it the United Kingdom of Great Britain, INCLUDING Ireland in that? Scotland is included. No wonder the Irish are so eager for violence, their own triumvirate nation ostracizes them. Then the Catholics and the Protestant Irish attack each other like it's a dog fighting match , teeth, claws, and AK-47's bared/locked & loaded and ready for action. They just need to CALM DOWN. The numbers on Catholic-Protestant are 43:57. That's an easy fix, just convert 7% of the protestants to catholicism. Bam. Peace.
Then there is movie buff turned dictator Kim Jong Il. That country has some serious issues. North Koreans have only been permitted to see Southern relatives twice in the last sixty years. In 1985 fifty people crossed the border, and in 2000, 100 people. He also needs to stop it with his insane army. A quarter of NK's GNP is spent on the military. Why not spending that on police forces to control the crime rate, and public schools so the Korean kids can learn things? Seems obvious. Maybe someone should make a movie out of it and send it to Kimmy. This photo of North Korean soldiers patrolling the fence around their country looks like something out of the holocaust. Oh yeah, they also have nukes too.
One Big Happy Prison
I disagree with Moore on this point. If adults who commit capital crimes get the death penalty, then children sixteen and older should have that right as well. They're only two years away from being legal adults anyways. What fantastic breakthrough will they go through in one hundred and four weeks that will magically grant them the powers of maturity?
But I do say that whatever judge sentences a mentally handicapped juvenile/adult to death needs to have his mental health questioned as well. There is also a SIXTY PERCENT error rate! So the courts are happily sending innocent people to the electric chair due to incompetent lawyers or evidence? This is stupid. They can't even fact check in our judicial systems!? This is insane on so many levels. Russia and Mexico are looking better and better. Won't be long now before pogroms are carried out far and wide to execute "potential criminals".
Democrats, DOA
Is Democrat some slang for republican? Seriously? In this chapter Moore revealed all the jerk "Democrats" who committed political suicide and voted Republican on a scandalous number of issues. Some of them are from my very own state of Ohio! Ralph M. Hall, Rep. for Texas (Bush's state, of course) voted with the GOP eighty percent of the time! Fifty four different people, ranging from Hall to Ellen Tauscher (honorary republican 30% of the time) vote against their own party. Senator Zell Miller, resident of Georgia, votes for the Republican agenda ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE TIME! This is all based on actual voting records from the year 2000!
Then Moore listed all the Republicans who are complete weaksauce and will bend like a reed if a true Democrat ever had the guts to show his/her face in the Senate or House of Representatives. But that will never happen, because there is no real Democrat. It's just another one of those government conspiracies. Why can't we be more like Russia? All of their presidents have not been allied with a party. When one was asked to join the United Russia party, he politely told them no, "I want to put the interests of my country, not a party, first." Russia is looking pretty good right now.
The People's Prayer
As a complete supporter of stem cell research and what it might mean for the lives of thousands of humans, I find the Right to Life people a bit ridiculous. Michael agrees, but I think he's really just coming from the Democratic standpoint of "freedom to do whatever the heck you want". This chapter just made me mad. George W. Bush, our thoughtful and ever-so-sensitive "president", the biggest Right to Stupidity zealot of them all, changed his tune when his good 'ol buddy Ronald Reagan was on his deathbed. How on earth can you be so inconsiderate as to not give a thought to all the adults and children dying way before their time?
I completely agree with Michael Moore's "prayer" to give all stupid, ignorant politicians every debilitating disease ever. I wonder how many people died just because Bush couldn't give a care to even looking up what a stem cell is. Or, for that matter, what the word research means. Other politicians followed suit, including Strom Thurmond, who says abortion is a sin except in cases of rape or incest. Hmm... I wonder if his daughter having a disease that scientists say may be curable by stem cells has anything to do with his fickle opinion...
So here is an excerpt from Moore's lovable "A Prayer To Afflict the Comfortable: 'Rather, dear <insert deity here>, we ask that you inflict every member of the House of Representatives with horrible, incurable cancers... We ask that every Senator from the South be rendered addicted to drugs and find himself locked away for life... make the children of every senator in the Mountain Time Zone gay- really gay." It goes on. As it should. Most of those senators have never been to a poor community, never gone to a public school, and never had to wear their brother's or sister's old hand-me-downs because their mom's two jobs couldn't afford otherwise. And equally, they never gave a thought to people who have. Don't get me wrong, Obama sucks too. He's gone through those and still turned out war-mongering and word-garbling. Seriously, the guy actually said "uhh", "aah", and "umm" 144 times in a single speech. That's uhh just ahh a penchant uhh for umm the real uhh peace ahh activists.
Tallahassee Hi-Ho
Why didn't Ralph Nader win the elections? I would have voted for him. He seems like the only intelligent lifeform on the ballot today, even if he is kinda old. People, as Moore points out,blame Nader for stealing votes from Gore. Excuse me? Nader is of the independent party, not a democrat, so it isn't like he split the liberal vote in two. It's Gore's fault. The man lost THREE OUT OF THREE debates against BUSH! To quote Moore, "where I come from the smart guy wins in a debate; the dumb guy loses". Gore isn't even a real democrat, he and conservative Bush agreed on THIRTY-SEVEN different issues. That's a bit suspect!
Nader should have won. If Gore can't win a back-and-forth word battle with the Bush-ey jr., which is the raw equivalent of Serena Williams in a tennis match against a howler monkey, then he does not deserve the presidency. The poor Nader supporters were really just democrats hiding behind the title of "independent voter" so they wouldn't get lynched by traveling republicans, and jumped ship on the S.S. Nader once it seemed that Gore might need them. They were just standing by to make sure that Gore could see the little Nader-planes doing circles around his Gore-zeppelin, a constant threat on the sidelines to keep him in check as a Democrat, not the Republican-in-disguise he seemed to be. So many facades here!
What an exciting end to the novel. I'll never look at our country the same way again!
Chapter Analysis and PredictionA Very American Coup
According to Michael Moore, George Bush gained his presidency through a coup d'etat. Al Gore recieved 539,898 more votes than Bush, but because of Bush's wealth and connections, there was a scandal with the Florida voting machines. Katherine Harris, Bush's campaign co-chairwoman and Florida secretary of state in charge of elections set up the voting machine database to deny voting rights to ex-convicts and "suspected" convicts residing in Florida. This just "coincidentally" happened to remove almost every African-American Floridian, and thousands of others who just commited small crimes, even if it was something as dumb as loitering in the 1950's.
The system removed everyone with a similar name, birthdate, and social security number as a convict. So if a John Smith was arrested in summer of '78 for a DUI, then hundreds of people are screwed.
I think this is ridiculously suspicious. But it's good to know that America didn't willingly place that pompous, under-educated, redneck twit as our head of state. But this voting scandal gets worse when it turns out that a list of false convicts, people who got their right to vote reinstated after serving their time long ago, was sent to Florida by Texas. Texas is George W. Bush's state!
The American media, naturally, pretended nothing ever happened, but the BBC was hot on Bush's trail. You have to love those Brits. At least thirty different Florida laws regarding the ballots and voting were ignored or changed. They're probably laughing their fuzzy hats off over at Buckingham Palace now, at least until Bush pushes the big red button that says DO NOT TOUCH in bright, friendly letters- and blows up the northern hemisphere. Seriously, is Ashton Kutcher going to jump out on election day and shout "Ha, bro! You just got punk'd!"? Because that's what it's starting to feel like. I have a strange predilection that this book is just going to continue baring what a joke our country really is.
Dear George
If you read this list, you'll wonder "how on EARTH did Bush get RE-elected!?" Moore lists all of Bush's "accomplishments", which include violating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (banning nuclear weapons), giving billions of federal dollars to destroying the environment, taking billions of dollars from education, welfare services, and lower-class privileges. He also cut taxes by 46%- for the wealthiest 1% of America. What ever happened to our right to impeach the President? Does it not apply here?
Also, Bush elected a lot of oxymorons into his Cabinet (heavy emphasis on the last two syllables) such as nominating Bennett Raley, opposer of the Endangered Species Act, as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science. Swim away, fish! Swim away! Civil rights opponent Terrence Boyle got a federal judgeship. I suggest we all follow the fish. This is getting downright te
rrifying.
The next part is by far my favorite fact in the book. George W. Bush, when asked in an interview what his favorite book was as a child, answered The Very Hungry Caterpillar. That book was published a year after Bush graduated from college! Next Moore is going to tell us that Bush went to Harvard and got a degree in metaphysics! In this chapter it is revealed that Bush is an illiterate, an alcoholic, and a convicted felon. And not only did he ACTUALLY go to Harvard; he also got into Yale! Is this a joke!? Also, Bush denys financial support for students that have done drugs, but not for homicidal murderers. Which is funny, because Bush himself did drugs, and was arrested three times for various reasons, including a DUI. The next chapters are only going to get worse, in my opinion. I'm shaking in my slippers.
Dow Wow Wow
As predicted, this chapter is scarier than the last. Commercial airplane pilots, who control the lives of hundreds of people at a time, get paid less than a kid working at McDonalds. Starting pay at American Airlines is $16k, but when pilot training and uniforms are deducted, that drops to about $9k...gross. Half the pilots on staff are eligible for food stamps. But that will look bad on American Airlines' records, so all employees are not allowed to apply for food stamps, or they will be fired. In 2001, pilots at Delta Airlines went on strike. The greedy little Union-ers were demanding $20k as the starter pay. Delta didn't agree for almost a year, after they had almost driven themselves to bankruptcy from worker shortages. I don't know about you, but I'd like the guy taking me and my family up to a breathtaking 30,000 feet to be content and focused, not wondering which fast food join he'll have to stick up in order to pay his rent. Or one who decides to make the plane take a nosedive into the Everglades.
Now Moore tells us that there is no recession, it's just the rich people trying to stave off the middle and lower classes with honey flavored lies. 17% of the top 82 companies in America pay NO taxes, or, like General Motors, they worked the tax companies so well that the government ended up owing billions of dollars! The IRS has giving up headhunting the rich, and has moved on to the regular, hardworking, average American! Taxes for that subsidiary has gone up by more than 13%. In 1919, 108 actual U.S. car companies existed. In 1929, that dropped to 44. In 1959, it moved to 8. Now? There are 2.5 actual American car companies in America. Capitalism is ripping us to shreds faster than an angry toddler with a napkin.
Kill Whitey
That always annoyed me, when people assumed that Germans caused WWII. Sure, they played a major part, but not ALL of them were Nazis. There were also Polish Nazis, Swedish, basically whoever appeared Aryan. You can't just stick the German label on and call it quits. Hitler wasn't even German! He was Austrian! Rant over, sorry.
Slavery? White men. CEOs that lay off thousands of Americans a year, forcing them to foreclose and live in soup kitchens? White men. Slaughter and eviction of thousands of Native Americans (including the Cherokee, which have a ton of blood ties to my family)? White men. According to Moore, Caucasians are the scariest apex predators in the world.
In Michael Moore's film Roger & Me, a woman clubs a bunny to death to sell it as meat. He recieved thousands of angry letters and messages with opinions from random Americans who thought the bunny scene was too graphic, too disturbing, made them physically sick, left them lying awake at night unable to sleep. Afew minutes later in the next scene, a black man in a Superman cape holding a plastic toy gun was shot to death by Flint (Michigan) police. He didn't recieve a single message about that. In fact, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America; gives movie ratings) gave Roger & Me an R rating, saying the bunny scene was too violent for younger audiences. They didn't mention the shooting at all.
Moore talks about how no black man got 400 people to drink Kool-Aid (Jim Jones, founded a cult, got more than 400 people to commit mass suicide by drinking Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide) or how "a Beach Boys songwriter casts a spell causing half a dozen nymphets to murder 'all the piggies' up in the Hollywood Hills" (A lot of facts wrong here, it was the Beatles, not the Beach Boys, and the murders were caused by Charles Manson and his "family" to start a war between the whites and the "piggies", or blacks. Charles Manson was a nutcase who thought he was Jesus and thought the Beatles were sending him hidden messages that an interracial war was coming called Helter Skelter, and that him and his "family" should hide. And most of 'The Family' was male, with a couple females, so not "half a dozen nymphets".) I had to do some research here, I've never heard of these guys. Moore would say it's because the media doesn't want to publicize white crimes. I think it's more because these lunatics died before I was even born. This is getting really scary. I didn't know people that insane existed. And Charles Manson is from Cincinnati OHIO! Then there is that crazy chap who read Catcher in the Rye and decided to kill John Lennon. Poor Beatles.
Then he points out, why are rap lyrics shunned so much (I sold bottles of sorrow/Then chose poems and novels- Wu-tang Clan) when rock/pop songs written by famous caucasians are so much worse (I killed everything in my path/I can't say I'm sorry for the things we done- Bruce Springsteen). That last one wasn't even gramatically correct. I'm starting to fear the white man too.
Idiot Nation
This chapter discusses that we are a nation of idiots. 44 million Americans can't read, and worse, 200 million can read, but choose not to. Our own president thinks that Africa is a nation,not a continent. Then he brags that "even C students can become the President of the United States!". Wow. I think that every time we decide to bomb a country or city, they should take a poll of how many people can locate that place on a map.In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower elected Maxwell Gluck to be Ambassador to Ceylon (Sri Lanka)- even though the man couldn't name either the prime minister OR the country's capital! Moore thought that the problems in education weren't caused by the kids lack of knowledge, but the adults. He was watching a television show where a pompous hothead named Fred Barnes whined on and on about how teachers and their evil union are stupid and slowing down our children. "These kids don't even know what the Iliad and the Odyssey are!" the guy fumed. So Moore called him up the next day and asked Barnes to tell him what the Iliad and the Odyssey were. Barnes didn't know, and thought this was some prank.The chapter starts talking about how Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth don't require their students to take a History or Foreign Language class and as such, the kids that go to them know nothing important (if they want a place in government). I think this is slightly outdated information... Most colleges now make you take a
foreign language class just to get in.
Apparentally, a lot of people share the idea that if your kid ain't learnin', it's the damn teachers fault! Um, no. Those teachers turn their backs to high wages and embrace the disdain from parents just so they can teach your child. And with all the time spent in schools (roughly fourteen years. If the kid doesn't go to college, that's almost his/her entire childhood. When you finish school, you're a legal adult.), teachers essentially raise your kid for you. They do what should be the job of the parents. Are they shown the appreciation they deserve? Oh good heavens, no! That would be bordering on sanity! We show them as much hostile, barely concealed fury, as we can muster. "You've got to wonder about teachers who claim to put the interests of children first- and then look to milk the system dry through wage hikes," says the December 2000 issue of the New York Post. First off, it's difficult to milk a system that barely has anything in it to begin with. Whenever presidents need money, it always seems like the first thing they touch is the education budget.
At Greenbrier High School, a boy named Mike Cameron wore a Pepsi shirt on "Coke Day" and was suspended for a day. The school had entered a contest sponsered by Coca Cola that could win them $10,000. Pepsi sent Mike sponsorship and gave him free Pepsi for life. Now that's desperation on the school's part. (I also have to add, whoever snuck past the Wikipedia authorities and graffitied the Greenbrier High page under the heading Web Design Class, it was hilarious. Well done. "Microsoft Frontpage, HTML, and Dreamweaver are studied. It is extremely useful, if useful means that very few people will ever use any of these programs or skills in their entire lives. Please think twice before attempting. Press alt + F4. That is the most you can get out of life at this point.")
Oh, and according to Moore, there is no permanent record.
Nice Planet, Nobody Home
Finally, another eyewitness to the con that is recycling! I myself have seen the trash guys pick up the actual brown trash bins, then throw the recyclable materials from the red bins in with it! This is done by most trash facilities, companies, and even Congress. Congress throws away 1,959 TONS of waste paper EVERY YEAR! CRAZY!!! I don't even want to recycle anymore.Then, way back when there was
This leads to my next thesis, that cows are slowly taking over the earth. I mean, look at it, they release a ridiculous amount of carbon dioxide that is eating away at our atmosphere, they only produce about two pounds of beef for every twelve pounds of grass and grains, they contribute to deforestation, and they have the ability to destroy the human race with a human brain eating parasitic protein. This gives me a hearty prejudice against the cattle. So the next time you feel bad when eating a hamburger, poor cows, whatever, remember: you're helping save the human race.
The End of Men
Men are slowly going extinct, according to a Census record in 2000. Baby boys are becoming rare. Moore says that because of in vitro fertilization, and theThen there come the statistics. 496 of the top 500 companies in America are run by men. No woman has ever been president, and has only recently even been considered on the ballot. There are 45 male governors- out of fifty states. Just think, one of those FIVE WOMEN is Sarah Palin, so really it's 45 men, 4 women, and 1 maverick. To earn the same salary as a guy does in a year, a woman has to work a year and four months. This is weird and dumb, considering the next facts:
Men don't live as long as women- almost 15 years less. Their brains are less well-formed and deteriorate faster with old age. They are more prone to disease. Their body systems break down faster than women's. Considering this, if you share Moore's Stone Age ideals, the only useful men in the world live in Switzerland, where every man has to protect his country and family from impending crisis. That's right, ALL OF THEM. It's like the cave men going out to hunt for mammoth all over again. But more peaceful. And tidier.
So consider this: No, I'm kidding, who cares about all this gender apartheid crap. I'm no feminist, because I think they're jerks. Equally, I'm no misogynist, because they're worse. In a perfect world, all the feminists and misogynists would be transported to some tiny island where they can fight out their differences like the neanderthals they are, and leave us Homo Sapiens in peace.
We're Number One!
We are just amazing... the U.S. is the ONLY COUNTRY that declined the Kyoto Protocol treaty, where countries have to make goals to lower their carbon dioxide emissions or keep them at a steady rate. Only three other countries didn't accept, and they're undecided (Afghanistan, Western Sahara, and Somalia). This is all Bush's fault. What else has he done? Only started two new cold wars with China and Russia, withdrew troops from Palistan/Israel causing new horrific bouts of violence between the Arabs and the Jews, did the same to Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro), got the UN to remove the US from its Human Rights Committee, bombed civilians in Iraq, and more. Although we are only 4% of the world's population, we own TWENTY-FIVE percent of its' wealth. Crazy.Then, of course, when Russian President Gorbachev offered to destroy all of Russia's stockpiled nuclear weapons as long as we destroyed ours, what did we do? Nada, zip, zero. They got rid of all of their 39,000 warheads, and we just sat back and watched the broke Russians shiver in the cold. We missed the chance of a lifetime. Now, since the Russians are so poor, they are thinking of making more nukes and selling them to Iran and North Korea. Of course. Thank you, President Bush.
We are currently annoying Israel, North Korea, AND Yugoslavia, ALL AT THE SAME TIME! Give yourselves a pat on the back, folks! WE started all the fighting in Israel, by dumping all the Israelites there. Poor Palestinians have no clue what to do. They are basically treated like slaves. They have zero voting rights, can't own property, and are second-class citizens. They do not have universal rights. They are taxed, jailed, and Cherokee'd around Israel like farm animals. We give this country $3 billion dollars a year so the Israelites can form an apartheid. And if we realize that this is gregariously similar to our treatment of African Americans, then Israel has a good 300 years, a bloody civil war, and a group of nonviolent protests that it still needs to go through to break free from this prejudiced slump. Now the real question is, WHY ON EARTH did we dump the Jews in a country full of people that hate them? The Jewish can only take so much- now they're lashing back. Israel has nuclear weapons. We should all be building the bomb shelters now, because if WE had nukes back during the civil war, I'm sure it would have played out ALOT differently. I suggest they BEGIN with the nonviolent protests and see where that takes them.
The biggest joke of a nation ever is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Just look at the name. They can't just call it the United Kingdom of Great Britain, INCLUDING Ireland in that? Scotland is included. No wonder the Irish are so eager for violence, their own triumvirate nation ostracizes them. Then the Catholics and the Protestant Irish attack each other like it's a dog fighting match , teeth, claws, and AK-47's bared/locked & loaded and ready for action. They just need to CALM DOWN. The numbers on Catholic-Protestant are 43:57. That's an easy fix, just convert 7% of the protestants to catholicism. Bam. Peace.
Then there is movie buff turned dictator Kim Jong Il. That country has some serious issues. North Koreans have only been permitted to see Southern relatives twice in the last sixty years. In 1985 fifty people crossed the border, and in 2000, 100 people. He also needs to stop it with his insane army. A quarter of NK's GNP is spent on the military. Why not spending that on police forces to control the crime rate, and public schools so the Korean kids can learn things? Seems obvious. Maybe someone should make a movie out of it and send it to Kimmy. This photo of North Korean soldiers patrolling the fence around their country looks like something out of the holocaust. Oh yeah, they also have nukes too.
One Big Happy Prison
But I do say that whatever judge sentences a mentally handicapped juvenile/adult to death needs to have his mental health questioned as well. There is also a SIXTY PERCENT error rate! So the courts are happily sending innocent people to the electric chair due to incompetent lawyers or evidence? This is stupid. They can't even fact check in our judicial systems!? This is insane on so many levels. Russia and Mexico are looking better and better. Won't be long now before pogroms are carried out far and wide to execute "potential criminals".
Democrats, DOA
Is Democrat some slang for republican? Seriously? In this chapter Moore revealed all the jerk "Democrats" who committed political suicide and voted Republican on a scandalous number of issues. Some of them are from my very own state of Ohio! Ralph M. Hall, Rep. for Texas (Bush's state, of course) voted with the GOP eighty percent of the time! Fifty four different people, ranging from Hall to Ellen Tauscher (honorary republican 30% of the time) vote against their own party. Senator Zell Miller, resident of Georgia, votes for the Republican agenda ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE TIME! This is all based on actual voting records from the year 2000!
Then Moore listed all the Republicans who are complete weaksauce and will bend like a reed if a true Democrat ever had the guts to show his/her face in the Senate or House of Representatives. But that will never happen, because there is no real Democrat. It's just another one of those government conspiracies. Why can't we be more like Russia? All of their presidents have not been allied with a party. When one was asked to join the United Russia party, he politely told them no, "I want to put the interests of my country, not a party, first." Russia is looking pretty good right now.
The People's Prayer
As a complete supporter of stem cell research and what it might mean for the lives of thousands of humans, I find the Right to Life people a bit ridiculous. Michael agrees, but I think he's really just coming from the Democratic standpoint of "freedom to do whatever the heck you want". This chapter just made me mad. George W. Bush, our thoughtful and ever-so-sensitive "president", the biggest Right to Stupidity zealot of them all, changed his tune when his good 'ol buddy Ronald Reagan was on his deathbed. How on earth can you be so inconsiderate as to not give a thought to all the adults and children dying way before their time?I completely agree with Michael Moore's "prayer" to give all stupid, ignorant politicians every debilitating disease ever. I wonder how many people died just because Bush couldn't give a care to even looking up what a stem cell is. Or, for that matter, what the word research means. Other politicians followed suit, including Strom Thurmond, who says abortion is a sin except in cases of rape or incest. Hmm... I wonder if his daughter having a disease that scientists say may be curable by stem cells has anything to do with his fickle opinion...
So here is an excerpt from Moore's lovable "A Prayer To Afflict the Comfortable: 'Rather, dear <insert deity here>, we ask that you inflict every member of the House of Representatives with horrible, incurable cancers... We ask that every Senator from the South be rendered addicted to drugs and find himself locked away for life... make the children of every senator in the Mountain Time Zone gay- really gay." It goes on. As it should. Most of those senators have never been to a poor community, never gone to a public school, and never had to wear their brother's or sister's old hand-me-downs because their mom's two jobs couldn't afford otherwise. And equally, they never gave a thought to people who have. Don't get me wrong, Obama sucks too. He's gone through those and still turned out war-mongering and word-garbling. Seriously, the guy actually said "uhh", "aah", and "umm" 144 times in a single speech. That's uhh just ahh a penchant uhh for umm the real uhh peace ahh activists.
Tallahassee Hi-Ho
Why didn't Ralph Nader win the elections? I would have voted for him. He seems like the only intelligent lifeform on the ballot today, even if he is kinda old. People, as Moore points out,blame Nader for stealing votes from Gore. Excuse me? Nader is of the independent party, not a democrat, so it isn't like he split the liberal vote in two. It's Gore's fault. The man lost THREE OUT OF THREE debates against BUSH! To quote Moore, "where I come from the smart guy wins in a debate; the dumb guy loses". Gore isn't even a real democrat, he and conservative Bush agreed on THIRTY-SEVEN different issues. That's a bit suspect!Nader should have won. If Gore can't win a back-and-forth word battle with the Bush-ey jr., which is the raw equivalent of Serena Williams in a tennis match against a howler monkey, then he does not deserve the presidency. The poor Nader supporters were really just democrats hiding behind the title of "independent voter" so they wouldn't get lynched by traveling republicans, and jumped ship on the S.S. Nader once it seemed that Gore might need them. They were just standing by to make sure that Gore could see the little Nader-planes doing circles around his Gore-zeppelin, a constant threat on the sidelines to keep him in check as a Democrat, not the Republican-in-disguise he seemed to be. So many facades here!
What an exciting end to the novel. I'll never look at our country the same way again!